The present disclosure relates generally to computer-based search engines, and, in particular, to methods, systems, and computer program products for charitable computing.
Advertising revenue derived from advertisements associated with search results from Internet search engines provide a substantial source of income for numerous companies. When a user initiates a search for one or more search terms using an Internet search engine, the Internet search engine typically returns advertisements associated with the one or more search terms in addition to the search results. The advertisements may be in the form of sponsored links, including graphical displays. Companies that operate Internet search engines may generate advertising revenue based on displaying advertisements (e.g., pay for placement), and/or when the user clicks upon an advertisement that directs the user to the advertiser's website (e.g., pay per click). Another approach to generating revenue through an Internet search engine is to initially visit a third-party website that forwards the user's search request to an Internet search engine, and subsequently, the Internet search engine operator splits the advertising revenue with the third-party website operator based upon the user's interaction with the search results generated by the Internet search engine.
Existing search engines perform Web-based searches for content available on the World Wide Web using servers that are remote to the user. While search engines may provide an option to search within a given domain name or on a Web page currently being viewed by the user, the scope of the search is limited to content that is available on the Web. For example, search engines are incapable of performing a search on the user's local computer. Moreover, domain name specific searches that employ an Internet search engine typically do not generate any revenue, e.g., a search within an intranet. Although separate applications exist that support local searching, the applications lack the ability to generate revenue based upon search results. For example, the user may perform a local search for content on the user's computer using a file browser application, but the local search does not generate any revenue.
While Internet search engine operators or third party website operators may donate a portion of their search based revenues to charity, the percentage of the donations is typically small due to the operators' reliance upon Internet-based advertising revenue as the majority of their profits. Although a number of computer users have Internet access, there are many computer users who do not have Internet access, or may satisfy their searching needs without accessing the Internet. Therefore, it would be beneficial to develop methods and systems that provide both local and remote searching capability, which can derive revenue from sources other than Internet-based advertisers, such that revenue generated from a variety of search-based sources can be allocated to one or more charitable organizations that may be of the user's choice. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for charitable computing.